Value Pluralism: “more must mean better”?

I’m not at all sure that either Williams or Berlin would accept this but might not something like this at least make sense of the comment?

Suppose we believe that there are many different ways for a life to be a good life, and that these different ways to be a good life cannot be compared on any single scale (or perhaps even any small number of scales.) [I’m not sure this is true, I should add, but it might be.] Furthermore, we might have reason to think that for extra-moral reasons some of these ways of life are better suited to some people, either as individuals or as members of groups, than are others, but that for each person only a small number of possible ways of life would be good ones. Then, we might think that “more is better” here because it might allow more chance for more people to live a good life than if we restrict the types of lives available to a smaller range.

(For this argument to work at all the “good” in “good life” has to be pretty vague, I think, since otherwise it seems a standard of common comparison is coming back in. This might well make the view unstable.)

I don’t think a view like this will work in the end and I’m not confident at all that Berlin or Williams had anything like that in mind, but it seems like a possible interpretation of the passage and perhaps like a position worth thinking about more.

I am avoiding work and thought I would give this a shot. I am not particularly familiar with these debates but since you have not yet received any comments I thought you wouldn’t mind. Here is a round about way of making this quote not be wrong at least (I think).

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If you do not have a basis on which to view some value as more important than another then you do not appear to have a basis on which to motivate neglecting one value in favor of another. Value 1 cannot be shown to be prior to Value 2 or Value 3, and so on.

Including more values that are like 1,2 & 3 means we are including more values that are of the character that no other values are more valuable than they are. There can be many values that are less valuable than 1, 2 & 3. Value pluralism does not require that all values are incommensurable. But because 1, 2 & 3 are part of the group of incommensurable values they are also top values. There are no values that can be ranked higher than them.

Now the only way you could justify simply picking one of 1,2 & 3 to neglect is to argue that it is more valuable to avoid potential conflicts over the three values than to have access to all three values. But this view requires making avoiding conflict a singular top value and all other values as ranked below it. If avoiding conflict was just a top value on par with 1,2 &3 the problem is just moved by one level of abstraction. The value of avoiding value conflict could not be shown to be prior to Value 1, Value 2, Value 3, or any combination. Thus we would have not basis on which to motivate neglecting 1,2 and 3 in favor of avoiding conflict in the single value system (note that we will soon see that having all these four options on par does not seem possible).

The Williams reasoning could thus be said to simply be the idea that it is good to have lots of top values in your society. But it seems to me that this reasoning is in the end dependent on a positive and substantive argument for the view that avoiding value conflict is not more valuable than any other values. If one can give such a substantive argument the upshot is that it is better to have lots of incommensurable tops values than to avoid conflict between values. In other words the failure to show that avoiding value conflict is higher ranked than other values leads to the conclusion that avoiding conflict between incompatible values is actually ranked lower than the value of pluralism. So the quote is actually dependent on a positive argument showing that value pluralism is ranked higher than avoiding value conflict. In other words the only options we have are that value pluralism is ranked higher than value conflict avoidance or than conflict avoidance is ranked higher than value pluralism. The quote itself does not demonstrate that value pluralism is higher ranked than the avoidance of value conflict.

It is not that the quote can’t make sense. But it needs an additional positive argument that avoiding value conflict cannot be ranked higher than the value of value pluralism.

Ha ha. I should have kept working.

“even to say that all the incommensurables are equally valuable and no other value is higher than they are is to commensurate them”

I do not think that is right. If is not contradictory to say that some value is incommensurable with some other set of values (i.e. no way to rank them) but that this same value is clearly more important that a whole range of other values. If you say that all possible values are incommensurable then you are into value relativism. But it seems to me that it should be possible to be a value pluralist in relation to some set of values without being forced into strict value relativism in relation to all possible values.

Not that the class of top values I describe are not equal in any other sense than that one cannot rank any other values over them in importance.

Rob, I assume you are aware of John Gray’s discussion of this in his book on Berlin as well as Crowder’s exchange with Williams/Berlin on precisely this (and much more) in the 1994 volume of the journal ‘Political Studies’.

That said, I think many contemporary debates on pluralism might be missing something crucial when they refer to Berlin, namely the sense in which Berlin’s thought was deeply informed by something that most political philosophers are not inclined to consider nowadays (even in the context of pluralism!): romanticism. It should not be forgotten, and Williams was surely well aware, that much of Berlin’s intellectual energy was devoted to understanding German/British Romanticism and its influences on modern political culture. From a romantic perspective the idea that ‘more is better’ would be quite intuitive. This, of course, is not an argument for pluralism. But the idea is that a workable reconstruction of Berlin’s argument ought to begin with romantic premises. That sort of approach, of course, is hardly common in contemporary political philosophy and so it might be historiographically mistaken to try to impose certain contemporary conceptions and approaches on Berlin. Just a thought.

(As for your larger project to the effect that ‘value pluralism has no entailments for politics’ I tend to agree. But as you well know I also disagree with you about the viability of a pragmatist pluralism. How then? To put it quickly, my view is that pluralism should not be seen as a thesis which one argues for (a la ‘pluralism is good’) but should be seen more as an intellectual historical current which severely conditions modern political realities such that pluralism is to be adopted as an orientation (a la ‘pluralism is right now unavoidable so we will work with it’). You might not get many entailments out of pluralism as an orientation in this way but you will certainly get a whole host of pressing pragmatic considerations. (Wasn’t this Rawls’s approach except that he then carved off the ‘unreasonable’ edges of pluralism?) This approach also helps focus on why pluralism might be quite consistent with certain substantive normative commitments such as those endorsed by many pragmatists. This, btw, is the argument I’ll be giving at the William James Society session at the Central-APA in response to your and Scott Aikin’s arguments about pragmatist pluralism. All this as an aside to the central thread on Williams/Berlin, of course, but I couldn’t resist.)

Robert, I understand Williams’ point to be something like this:

1) The riches of many moral points of view in a society or culture is generally a good thing. We are fortunate if we live in a society that is enriched by contact with its past and the pasts of other societies and cultures.

2) The history of a society includes ways in which a person can be valued for the life she chooses to live (her projects) and the more ways that people can be engaged in the important projects of their lives and be valued, the more opportunities people have for meaningful fulfillment.

3) Williams’ study of shame exemplifies that societies and cultures also place limits on the ways in which a person can live a fulfilling life and be valued by his community.

4) Societies and cultures that are rich in opportunities that are morally
acceptable, as well as in moral restraints that place some limits on
opportunities, offer the possibility of more interesting and fulfilling lives
to their members.

5) Generally, societies with fewer morally acceptable ways of living, with more rigid moral codes, or with more reductionistic moral codes are less interesting to live in and offer fewer opportunities for living a meaningful and fulfilling life.

So for Williams, I think, more is both more and, other things being equal, also better.

Robert, OK but the point is not that we know that they are equally valuable but rather that we know that we do not have any clear criteria on which to decide which one should be neglected and which one ought to be incorporated.

Wow, everybody is so nice here. Is this really a blog?

I’m not really sure why “better” can’t mean “morally better.”

Value pluralism does not prevent us from making moral judgments, and the moral judgments we make are frequently (second-order) claims about how people live with respect to (first-order) moral values. For instance, it’s morally better that people generally have the freedom to profess their moral beliefs, and we think it of moral value that people have the integrity not to betray their moral beliefs, even if we don’t happen to share those first-order beliefs.

Similarly, it seems to me to be fairly plausible to read Williams as making a second-order moral claim here: there are a bunch of first-order moral values, we can’t put them all on one measure, but effectively forcing people to live according to one or other single value leads to stunted lives, stunted lives are a morally bad phenomenon, thus a more permissive society is a better society.

The question then is whether the value pluralist can recognise certain kinds of lives as stunted in a morally troubling way without presupposing a common measure of value. I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t know how to compare the value of the life of a devout nun with that of a successful accountant, even if I can be morally troubled by powerful social pressure on fallen women to become nuns. Nor does this seem to imply that freedom is a trump value, a basic metric, or the sine qua non of all good lives.

That some moral claims are about the place of other moral values in our lives doesn’t seem to me to make moral values as such commensurable (at least in any troubling way). It just seems to make our picture of morality more complex. And messy is good for the value pluralist, right?

That said, I find myself a bit at sea in discussions of the incommensurability of values. My sense is that the real intuitive force behind the last section of “Two Concepts” is rooted in a much more modest anti-reductionism and an acceptance of essentially inevitable moral imperfection. It’s never been clear to me just what claim about incommensurability I have to accept to remain a member of Team Berlin.

Reading over your last comments, maybe I missed the problem. Is the problem: Why must more mean better? Or is the problem: How can more be morally better?

On the former interpretation, I’d agree that there are many implicit defeasible premises in Williams’s view, so perhaps “must” is too strong. But I don’t see why adding moral premises to generate a “morally better” conclusion is inconsistent with value pluralism.

In your example of a society that tries to avoid agonising conflict for its citizens, surely value pluralism can’t prevent us from saying that we have good moral reason, all things considered, to prefer a more permissive society that allows a broader range of lifestyles? Wouldn’t the basic point of the value pluralist simply be that we shouldn’t pretend that our choice of the liberal society comes with no moral loss. There’s a kind of tragedy involved in the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society: the value of a small community or a rustic life, or what-have-you, is lost and cannot be simply be restored through easy access to education, medical treatment, and career opportunities. The rustic life is not simply one way to rack up oodles of utiles. But we think the shift justified in any case.

“So the thought is that there’s an additional premise that’s tacit in Williams’ comment, and I’m not sure what it is, and I suspect it’s inconsistent with VP.”

Yes I would agree with this but I think I also agree with Simon that it could be possible to have an additional argument for why having more “first-order” values is better than avoiding value conflict, and to do this in a way that does not conflict with value pluralism. Although I have no suggestion on what that would be and unless Williams provides such an argument somewhere he fails to give us a reason to accept what he claims in the quote.

I’ve read Berlin, but not a lot more of the literature on this problem. But I’ve often thought it would be interesting to approach it from a metaethical standpoint, which I have rarely seen done. The idea would be to consider what the picture of incommensurability would have to be, metaphysically, to make sense. And for me, anyway, the way to do that is to reduce value properties to reasons. (Not everybody is happy with this move, but all of those on the right track find it plausible. ;->) Something has value just insofar as we have reason to seek it. I take it that incommensurability, as a property of the relation between values, comes out to something like this: there is no rational basis for choosing between the incommensurables. There is no stronger reason in favor of pursuing or promoting one rather than the other.

Now, I think this makes Matt’s move to save the Williams point moot. Either there are reasons for pursuing or promoting one alternative over another or there are not. Vagueness in ‘good’ does not solve the problem.

I think it also leaves intact Robert’s original problem. What it tells us, given an array of possible goods, is that reason is out of business. I can’t see that the size of the array, one way or another, would change that fact. Arguments to the contrary would one and all simply need to assert that there is after all some reason for preferring one good (or array of goods) over another, which would be to deny the incommensurability that was hypothesized. (But it might allow that there is a basis for choosing between two arrays, the goods within each array of which are incommensurable. That might be a way of making Aaron’s point, though it cannot be by virtue of the nature of the reason-giving properties of the goods in the arrays, I’d think. So what else? I have no idea.)

Not having much practice at chewing on this question, no doubt this way of going at things has problems I have not anticipated, but it is in effect the way I have let myself off the hook for having to worry about it much in the past. Does it make matters clearer or just add obfuscation?

Mark’s post gives me this idea.

We have a set of incommensurable values (set X) and we also argue that it is better to have access to as many of these incommensurable values as is possible. The argument that it is best to have as many incommensurable values as possible (MIV=good) is supposedly dependent on the reasoning that incommensurability means that we have no good reason to choose one value over the other. The claim is that there is no conflict between these two position because we have not claimed that the MIV=good view is part of set X. We are still value pluralist in relation to set X, but not in relation to MIV=good. But this reasoning forces us into a problem.

What kind of argument could we give for the view that having no reason to pick one or some values from set X means that we do have reason to pick all of them? One might say that it is too risky to exclude some values if we have no basis on which to exclude some but not others. What if we are excluding very important values? However this is not convincing because we cannot do a risk assessment without being able to evaluate the risk in some way, and the incommensurability of the values in set X seems to prohibit such an evaluative effort. Here our reason for says MIV=good is in conflict with value pluralism.

Alternatively we can abandon the argument that MIV=good because the values in set X are incommensurable. Instead we simply advance some positive argument to the effect that having many values from set X is good. Whatever that argument is, the problem we now have is that the reason for thinking more is better does not have much to do with the incommensurable nature of the values in set X. We do not have a conflict with value pluralism, but value pluralism is no longer the reason why we want as many values from set X as possible. In fact on this second approach it is just having room for many values in society that is viewed as good so one can imagine that we have reason to want to include first-order incommensurable values and even some values that we could rank lower than some of the values in set X.

Thus we are forced into a choice if we want to make the More=Good claim: 1) we can motivate this normative position based on the incommensurability of values and end up in a position that is self-contradictory in relation to value pluralism, or 2) we can motivate this normative position based on something other than the incommensurability of values and end up in a position where value pluralism is not determinative for the choice between many or few values.

Not surprisingly, I guess, that sounds roughly right to me. One small point in addition: the “risk” reply you reject I think is a non-starter, since (I take it) incommensurability is supposed to be a metaphysical (or at least evaluative) claim in the first place; the risk reply would only have a shot if incommensurability were construed epistemologically. Not only do I not know of anybody pushing that line, it would seem to be in a quite different spirit than that motivating, say, Berlin (especially given the romanticist roots Colin points toward).

Yep, the risk argument is a non-starter.

I could not think of an example of an argument that was not obviously in contradiction with VP, probably since I suspect that any argument would be in contradiction. But the point is that there is a way to go that does not deny the incommensurability of a set of values but that makes this incommensurability not particularly relevant to the question of incorporating more vs. less values.

Perhaps the implicit premise here is that “it is better, all things considered, to allow the flourishing or expression of genuine values?” This is, of course, a value-judgment, but it seems to tautologically follow from the nature of a value. A value, once established, just IS something that it is better to see more of than less of. It’s a bit odd for Berlin’s opponent here to ask why we ought to allow these other values to flourish… they haven’t taken on board exactly what is meant by “value”. If you can provide a definition of value which does not entail that it is something that “ought to be realized”, be my guest!

P1: There are multiple, incommensurable and genuine values [axiom]
P2: An restrictive (or ideological) society will emphasise the realization of one at the expense of the realization of others [def’n “restrictive society”]
P3: It is better, all things considered, to allow the flourishing of any genuine value [defn’ “value”]
—
Conclusion: It is better, all things considered, to live in a society that is less restrictive (or ideological).

Problems?

That value is conceptual linked to promotion, I don’t doubt. But I still see two problems here:

1. The idea that promotion entails maximizing just seems false. I may find Beethoven’s 9th to be of great value, but that doesn’t mean I have reason to maximize anything at all.

2. The fact that values are not just incommensurable but in competition for time, effort — in a word resources — means that the realization of one or some can come only at the cost of the realization of another, assuming finite supplies of such things. (That, I take it, is a major part of Berlin’s point.) And the fact that they are incommensurable (if they are) just is the fact that there is no way to commensurate them in such a way that there is anything between them to maximize.

I think you are right that what gets ruled out of court are social arrangements in which nothing of value is realized or promoted, but that’s hardly an interesting contestant anyway. The interesting case is, as Williams imagines it, one in which a wide variety are suppressed for the greater expression of some one. And I don’t see that there is an argument to be made to sustain his rejection of it, given value incommensurability. The fact that that seems so odd is, in my view, a reason to suspect the incommensurability claim, at least as to all the pertinent values.

Add some values can just be in conflict with each other.

Sometimes this conflict will just force us to make a choice between them, but sometimes it will simply make the promotion of the respective values more difficult. It is hard to know what to do in those case when the values in question are incommensurable.

That should say “And some values”

Hi Mark, I have to admit, I’m a little puzzled. I can’t see anything in your comment which directly addresses the argument as I’ve reconstructed it. I don’t think the argument entails “maximizing” anything, just realization/promotion all-things-considered (an important clause). Nor do I rely on any conception of an infinite number of resources. Nor does my conclusion deal with social arrangements in which no values are promoted. Could you explain your position a little further?

Nicholas, the problem is in your definition of “value.” You say, first, that a value is, by matter of definition, “something that it is better to see more of than less of.” If you didn’t mean by that that somehow values carry a rational constraint to maximize, I apologize, but I don’t know how else to understand that proposal. Second, that commitment seems to come into your argument in P3. But my point was not so much a matter of complaint about your argument as a complaint about what you take the definition of “value” to be.

Nicholas,

What is the relation of P1 (incommensurability) to P2 and P3 (i.e. more values = good)? It seems at least that you can take P1 away without any effect on P2 and P3 given the reasoning you advance.

Hi Aaron, you’re right of course, but I included it to show that there is no conflict with P1, which I take to be the initial poster’s contention. Nothing in P1 conflicts with the idea that values just are, by definition, things that are supposed to be realized or promoted.

Mark, you’re right that I didn’t intend P3 to embody some kind of maximization-imperative. In fact, it can be weakened to the following:

P3: It is better, all other things being equal, for a value to be realized or instantiated in the world than for it not to be. [def’n “value”]

This doesn’t require any maximization, just bare instantiation. It still follows that, all other things being equal, a non-ideological society is better than an ideological one. Furthermore, there is no reference made to the comparison or measurement of any values against one another, so the incommensurability thesis is not threatened.

I think there is still a problem here, and it is in your “all things equal” clause in P3. Either that is meant to be cognizant of the demands on scarce resources by other values, or it is not. If it is, the demands of incommensurability simply become unsatisfiable, since all of them claim a demand on promotion independently of the existence of other values making the same claims. And then no rational conclusion follows from the fact that more than one such values exist. But if it’s not, then in conditions of incommensurability the “all things equal” clause isn’t satisfied, and whatever rational demands would be imposed (i.e. by the “it is better” clause) if all things were equal simply don’t get a grip, since all things are not (by hypothesis) equal. So I agree that you have on this basis an argument for a society that realizes some values (in the existential quantifier sense of “some”) better than none, but not for a society that realizes some or many as against one. And that seems to me to be the real issue.

If it is, the demands of incommensurability simply become unsatisfiable, since all of them claim a demand on promotion independently of the existence of other values making the same claims. And then no rational conclusion follows from the fact that more than one such values exist.

It’s been ages since I’ve read Berlin thoroughly, so perhaps I’m not clear on what exactly the “demands of incommensurability” are, here. What, exactly, do you take to be the demand or demands of the incommensurability thesis that interfere with the argument as I’ve reconstructed it? It is true that all values, by definition, make a claim on promotion, and it is not the case (according to Berlin) that each can be fully promoted without the sacrifice of the promotion of others…

“we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others” (Berlin 2002, 213)

… but this is all incommensurability requires. I’ve read your reply over and over and I just can’t see what it is about values (so defined) that is inconsistent with Berlin’s claims. How does the observation that “all of them claim a demand on promotion independently of the existence of other values making the same claims” come into play, here?

Perhaps this will help resolve things: my ceteris paribus clause was only meant to catch the usual “but here’s a counterexample where it is NOT good for a value to be realized!” rejoinders one so often has to deal with. It wasn’t meant to say anything else, and the point of P3 is just to say that a value is, by definition, something which demands realization. I maintain that insofar as one accepts the existence of multiple values, one is committed to saying that it would be better if all of them were instantiated.

Let me try to reframe my dilemma, because your reply reveals how badly I did that the first time. The issue, as you point out, concerns what sorts of exceptions the ceteris paribus clause is meant to exclude. That is, we can go two ways with respect to the kinds of conditions under which the otherwise-unqualified force of P3 is qualified or negated. One way: these conditions include the presence of other values making competing demands. The other way: such conditions do not qualify or negate the force of P3.

Now, one way of reading Berlin, as you do here:

“It is true that all values, by definition, make a claim on promotion, and it is not the case (according to Berlin) that each can be fully promoted without the sacrifice of the promotion of others…”

suggests the first reading. The presence of reasons we have to promote one value are qualified, or overridden, or negated by the reasons we have to promote another value. In other words, in the presence of another value (value B), giving us opposing reasons of this sort, we do not have reasons (anyway effective reasons) to promote the first value (value A). And that suggests the “other things equal” clause is not satisfied. (I framed my dilemma poorly; really it’s the second disjunct that is at stake in this part of your reply.)

Put another way, P3 requires that we promote value A unless it competes with some value B. But conditions in which we face incommensurate values, such as the ones Berlin is contemplating, are all of that sort. That means either that P3 doesn’t apply, or (more accurately) that it does apply and it does not instruct us that we have reasons to promote the value in question, because its ceteris paribus clause has failed to be satisfied. The problem isn’t inconsistency: it’s vitiation. The presence of competing values defeats the reason-giving force P3 purports to pick out. That’s precisely the problem with that way of understanding P3.

The other way to go is captured in your last paragraph:

“my ceteris paribus clause was only meant to catch the usual “but here’s a counterexample where it is NOT good for a value to be realized!” rejoinders one so often has to deal with. It wasn’t meant to say anything else, and the point of P3 is just to say that a value is, by definition, something which demands realization.”

On this reading, the ceteris paribus clause is not triggered by the presence of the competing values, so P3 is in full force. The problem is, it is in full force for both value A and value B. The problem is that we cannot respond to the demands of P3 for both A and B: as Berlin has it, satisfying the demands for one requires the sacrifice of the satisfaction of the demands for the other. Which to choose? And my point was: we have no reason from the facts given by these values. I think this is clearest if we think in terms of reasons rather than values, but you can make the point either way. We are doomed to fail to do what is rationally required of us by the nature of either A or B as values, characterized as in P3. We can’t do both.

And now we can suppose that there are not just values A and B, but also (say) C and D. What is the rational basis for claiming that we must devote some resources to B, C, and D, when those come at the cost of satisfying the demands of A? My point (and I think the points Robert and Aaron were making earlier) is that the fact that P3 holds for these values (A, B, C, and D) can do absolutely nothing to give us reason one way or another in this case. If we have reason, it would have to come from some further evaluative fact in the case, and in that event it’s hard to see how the incommensurability provision of P1 can hold. When P1 is true, P3 just doesn’t do any work.

May I suggest that the assumption that incommensurability entails incomparability is not one that’s endorsed by all value pluralists. It is by, e.g., Gray or Raz, but not by Berlin, Hampshire or Williams. To the latter, values can be incommensurable, i.e. irreducible to a common standard of measure (because neither the principle of identity, a=a, nor the principle of transitivity, if a > b, and b>c, then a>c, hold) and yet still be rationally comparable. To do so, however, one must engage a kind of practical reason that’s something like Aristotle’s phronesis.

Hi Mark,

Thanks, that’s much more clear now, and I see what you mean. There is a lot more work to do, here. I think, however, that Berlin perhaps tacks a lot more on to the Incommensurability Thesis here than it strictly requires. It may be that there is no “common currency” with which to resolve conflicts between values, but this doesn’t mean that their realization must necessarily negatively covary, which seems to be a logically seperate issue. You’re right though, insofar as Berlin adopts this second thesis, nothing about the nature of values necessarily leads us to the conclusion that more of them ought to be realized.

Nicholas, as I’ve read Berlin (no claim to expertise), I’ve always thought it was that second claim that animated him, so he thinks it’s true. And I agree with you that denying it is one way to defang the problem.

The other way to go (which I quite like) is Charles’ point. It matters a lot what is built into the idea of ‘incommensurability.’ If it is just a lack of a common metric, which if we had it would enable us to use a “more is better” heuristic, that still doesn’t preclude the possibility of other bases for rational determination as to how to resolve competition. But my impression (again, no great expertise here) is that sometimes that further possibility is just what the incommensurability claim is meant to rule out: that there neither is nor can be any rational basis for choosing between the claims of competing values. If that is the view, then I don’t see how an appeal to phronesis could help, because phronesis is nothing if not a response to reasons (albeit perhaps not in codifiable form)! I’d think if phronesis is seen as the right response (and I myself am attracted to this way of proceeding) then we have to think there is some rational purchase to be had, even if it is not by means of a common metric. That is, we’ve got to be taking the incommensurability claim in the first (weaker) way. Then, of course, the only remaining task is the teeny one of making out what that rational basis is (but of course one can safely leave that exercise to the reader!).

I’m sorry not to have followed all the contributions to this thread as closely as I should have, but I thought that what Charles said was a much better way of putting the point I wanted to make above.

Take two values X and Y, that are contingently incompossible (and not reducible to some more basic value Z) such that a choice of Society 1 is bad terms of X and such that a choice of Society 2 is bad in terms of Y.

The first question is: Can there be any rational grounds to prefer 1 over 2?
The second question is: Can there be any grounds to think 1 morally superior to 2?

I think the answer to both questions is yes. Just because there is no common metric value Z, does not mean there are no other rational or moral resources at our disposal. Indeed, the pluralist will say there is an abundance of such resources. Dime a dozen. Comparability comes quite cheap, and is not really particularly mysterious.

For instance, we can appeal to the values of M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, and T to support the choice of society 1 or to explain why Y is a particularly important value; and appeal to the evils of A, B, C, and D as reasons not to choose society 2. All of these will be rational grounds, and some of them will be moral grounds. (In particular, some of these rational and moral resources will involve value claims specifically about how other values figure in our lives.)

Then the question becomes: what rational reason is there to suppose choice of 1, with its values of M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Y, ~A, ~B, ~C, and ~D, is preferable to the choice of 2, with its value of X. Doesn’t the question just get pushed back to this further level?

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that there aren’t going to be conclusive reasons to demonstrate the superiority of 1 against all possible responses. But I don’t think we should be looking for such an absolute answer here. So no, the question is not problematically pushed back, because 1. some good rational and moral reasons have been given so far, and 2. what’s left is a question of coherent reflective equilibrium (perhaps this is what Charles meant by phronesis). Note, I think this is going to be the same question of coherence that any moral theory is inevitably going to end up with, whether it incorporates value pluralism or value monism. I don’t see why an inconclusive but very coherent liberal pluralist political theory is any more philosophically troubling than an inconclusive but very coherent utilitarian political theory.

So I was right after all. The trick is in sucking in, ah, I mean enticing, a reader like Simon to do all the hard work for you.

I don’t think it’s right to equate reflective equilibrium with the phronesis-like practical reasoning that some value pluralists appeal to for comparing incommensurables. Reflective equilibrium aims, after all, for ‘equilibrium’, understood as a relatively settled articulation of a set of systematic principles, the theory of justice that is said to underlie a society’s political practices. Value pluralists, however, refuse to appeal to theories of justice for guidance: faced with conflict, they would have us negotiate in good-faith rather than apply a theory.

I say ‘phronesis-like’ rather than ‘phronesis’ because Berlin, Hampshire, Williams, etc., reject the theory-based target for which Aristotelian practical reason always aims. To Aristotle, one cannot reason (practically) about the ends, only about the means-towards-the-ends; the ends (i.e., the hierarchy of virtues that he believes is necessary for realising human well-being) are arrived at through theoretical reason (theoria). To value pluralists, by contrast, we must engage in practical reason/negotiation as regards both ends and means.

Charles, there seem to be two possible cases here, not just one. One would be the issue of value pluralism as a matter of aim in the lives of individual practical agents, where the other would involve social aims. I don’t see that there is a problem in either one for thinking of the phronesis-like practical reasoning as a matter of seeking reflective equilibrium, provided we are careful to distinguish the picture from the particular form it takes in Rawls.

Consider the individual case first. Rather than insisting that the target equilibrium of such reflection be a systematic theory, for example, why not think of the aim as a set of attitudes — a combination of cognitive, affective, and conative states, of just the sort that the ancients (at least Aristotle and Plato, at points) thought constituted the mental economy of the virtuous agent? And there need be no appeal to justice, either to principles or intuitions, as occupying some special place.

Neither do I think you are right about the “theory-givenness” of the target of phronesis, though theorizing might certainly be part of our reflection about it. Aristotle doesn’t deny that we can reason about ends; he denies that we can deliberate (the process giving rise to boulesis or choice — the “efficient cause” of action (NE VI.2), about ends, but even this point he qualifies by insisting that we can deliberate “about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general” (NE VI.5). Practical wisdom, not theoria, is the “true apprehension” of the end (NEVI.9).

The social case is tougher, obviously, because there’s no obvious social analog to this apprehension that can occur in individual agents. But neither, I’d think, would there be any obvious reason why some social function couldn’t be proposed as such an analog (though, so construed, that would seem to me to involve a perfectionist sort of liberalism as opposed to the neutrality sort that Berlin at least seems to favor.) The idea in any event is not simply to appropriate the model of reflective equilibrium from Rawls, nor of phronesis from the ancients, but to identify a new model of the former based on elements of the latter. Anyway, that’s the way I was thinking of it.

Mark, I don’t believe it makes much difference for value pluralists whether we’re talking about ethical or political conflicts. In both cases there are incommensurable values in conflict which need to be compromised. The “negotiations” required for this either take place between the parts of a single individual’s self in the case of an ethical dilemma, or between groups in society when it comes to a political conflict. And as regards the latter I would say that, should the pluralist be a liberal ideologically-speaking, then his or her liberalism can’t be neutralist since that requires having a theory to apply (in a neutral manner, like a referee applying the rulebook of a sport or a game) and Berlin, Hampshire, Williams, etc., are anti-theorists.

Regarding “reflective equilibrium,” I guess I’m just uncomfortable using the term to refer to a kind of practical reasoning that doesn’t aim for systematic theory. I mean, it’s Rawls’ term, and only those who do his kind of political philosophy seem to favour it. Also, to my knowledge, none of the value pluralists have ever used it to describe their approach. Then again, maybe I’m just being pedantic.

As for phronesis, I would translate NE VI.9 as asserting that good practical reasoning “is conducive to” or “brings success at attaining” or “promotes” some end. Practical reason doesn’t “apprehend” ends in the sense of recognizing or becoming clear about their nature since that’s the job of theoretical reason (as regards ethics). Of course the debate about what Aristotle really meant when he said that we deliberate not about ends but about what promotes ends (NE 1112b) has been going on for a few centuries now…

Charles, I’m trying to piece together your posts here to get a grip on what is motivating them and I am not clear on this. Before I say why, let’s set aside the point (which I fully accept) that we want to get Rawls, Berlin, Williams, et. al. right in their views, and not be saddling them with claims or interpretations they do not make. Thus, for example, it would be wrong to saddle Rawls with a view on which reflective equilibrium isn’t the upshot of a dialectic between settled moral convictions and the theoretical machinery afforded by a conception of justice. I’m with you there.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see Rawls’ own view as a conception of what form reflective equilibrium, in a broader sense, might take. Rawls didn’t invent the term either; he boosted it from Goodman, who was advocating it as a test of inference rules. The idea is a powerful one precisely because it is such a ready image — trying to fit a body of attitudes (beliefs among them) in a way that they cohere and we can make sense out of the whole (and perhaps equip ourselves to project the sorts of new or future cases that would also cohere.) Beliefs do cohere or fail to cohere not only with each other but with other judgment-sensitive attitudes (to borrow Scanlon’s term), and the same sorts of balancing and weighing are involved in the process of reconciling and making sense of the broader range of attitudes. We could give that process another name if we needed to, but I don’t see why we need to.

Now, one strain in your thought seems to be a resistance to codification, and therefore a resistance to anything that proposes to produce “theory” — which is, presumably, precisely a codification. And here too I grant that that is one form a theory make take, but it’s hardly the only one. It seems to me we have ready models of efforts at understanding that are valuable to us despite an unsuitability for codification (in fact, I’m inclined to think this is true, in the end, for most interesting forms of understanding). You can tie theory to codification, and tie theory to systematization, but I don’t see why we must or should. Again, granted, we need to observe the ways that other thinkers have done so, but why we should follow suit I simply don’t see.

Now, you originally proposed a phronetic-type activity as a way of comparing values that are incommensurable — and like others I am sympathetic with that idea, taking the incommensurability point to be precisely one about some metric that would allow for a codified method for adjudicating conflicts. If you think the results of an aspiration to reach reflective equilbrium must be capable of systematic expression or codifiability, then I could see why you would reject the connection. But there is no pretense that the method itself is codifiable, and I am not sure why we must think that, if we engage in it, such results can or must be possible. Rawls may think that, but why should we?

Setting aside the point about the reading of NE VI, reading any of this back into Aristotle seems unwarranted. He clearly thinks we can reason about ends, but if he thinks that the result of that reasoning amounts to a “system” of any very robust sort he manifestly fails to produce it. There are things we can know about our final end — and we can arrive at these through social and individual reflection — but casting that as a matter of “theory” independent the very sorts of processes that go into determining what to do seems quite alien to the conception of practical philosophy that runs throughout both the NE and the EE. In fact, he castigates Plato for doing just this in his (Plato’s) conception of the good in Republic. My sense in general is that this is to foist a modern and unwarranted conception of what moral (and other) theorizing must look like on an ancient approach that would have little of it (not just Aristotle, but Plato before him and the hellenists after him). (A really fine recent treatment of this issue, if you haven’t seen it, is Henry Richardson’s Practical Reasoning about Final Ends.)

Finally, I think you can conceive of liberalism as “neutral” either in its practices or in its grounding and legitimating ideals. These might, but maybe in some views might not, be related. I was thinking of it in the second sense. I don’t find the first sort (which I take you to be characterizing) attractive either.

I don’t think you’re being pedantic at all Charles. Certainly, it would be troubling if RE was meant to give us something very formulaic and systematic within the theory of distributive justice. But I guess, like Mark, I tend to see it as having (at least potentially) a broader and looser application.

Certainly there shouldn’t be any inconsistency between an endorsement of value pluralism and the very endeavour of having a liberal theory of justice. Rawls comes very close to endorsing Berlin’s value pluralism in Political Liberalism, when he agrees that there is no social world without loss (p. 197; I take it that Rawls does not mean the trite sense of no world without loss that merely notes the contingent limitations on our abilities — I take it he means that in principle not all goods are compossible). He also seems to draw back from endorsing Nagel on the fragmentation of value for reasons to do with the constraints of political liberalism’s philosophical commitments (p. 57).

One claim about RE that I would want to push is that insofar as it is a form of coherentism, it does not necessarily imply greater systemisation in our array of moral intuitions, beliefs, principles, commitments, etc. Sure, we try to build support for each point where it can be found, and we must try to massage away inconsistencies, but an overly neat or codifiable [thanks Mark] outcome is, I would say, less coherent rather than more. To use a bad analogy (and I’m allowed to use bad analogies, since we’re only blogging here) a conspiracy theorist has a very tight web of connections between his various beliefs about the assassination of JFK, the Freemasons, the Roswell UFO case, credit card banking, and the music of Nana Mouskouri. [He has, so we say, a theory for everything.] But that tightness and systemisation comes at the cost of a great deal of coherence with our recognition that sometimes things just do kinda sorta just happen.

If a system of thought has no place for the recognition that “sometimes things just kinda sorta happen” then it strikes me that the system has a serious defect. Otherwise put, this particular recognition merits an important place (a deep one, rather than just one on its margins, cf. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”) in any system of thought and if the thinker cannot fit it in then this suggests that his or her system is not as tight and coherent as it should be. So to me, more systematicity = more coherence.

But I’m no coherentist myself. Oh I’m all in favour of being coherent, but not in the systematic way that “coherentism” requires. Mark raised the question of the motivation behind my posts and so I guess should I come right out and admit that I myself am an anti-theorist (albeit with good intentions! ). That’s why I’m more attracted to value pluralism than I am to what I – admittedly idiosyncratically – call “neutralism,” the form of political philosophy led by Rawls and Co. (I’m also very critical of value pluralism, but that’s for another post.)

So no, I don’t agree that value pluralism is compatible with theories of justice (I’m putting aside the issue of ideology for the moment, i.e., whether a given approach would have us be liberals, socialists, conservatives, or whatever). To me, it all comes down to the question: how should we respond to conflict? Value pluralists say that we should engage in a form of practical reasoning that is unguided by theory, namely, in good-faith negotiations, while Rawls and Co. would have us apply a theory of justice (and when it comes to those less fundamental issues where they welcome deliberation, well then they require that we deliberate in ways that respect the constraints provided by their theories of deliberative democracy). So even though Rawls may accept that his “well-ordered” vision excludes some real values, and so that there’s tragedy in justice, the point is that it is indeed a well-ordered, by which he means systematic, vision – something like a rulebook for a sport or a game that can be neutrally applied. Now while Berlin, like Rawls, is a liberal, his liberalism is not derived from such a theory; rather, it’s simply a rough ranking of values which, within a negotiation session, will call for giving more weight to the values that liberals favour. So there are neutralist liberals like Rawls and there are pluralist liberals like Berlin; the former are theorists, the latter are not.

Mark, I agree with you that not all theories are codes or systems like Rawls’. I distinguish between two kinds of holism, the “systematic” and the “organic”. The former involves wholes made up of interlocked elements or modules, things that can potentially be grasped independent from the whole; while the latter’s parts are always more-or-less integrated together – they cannot be separated from the whole since that whole is literally present in every part. Theories are wholes and ancient theorists, e.g. Plato and Aristotle, almost always aim for organic ones, while most modern theorists (Hegel being the major exception), shoot instead for systematicity. And as I see it, “reflective equilibrium” is perhaps the most sophisticated account going of how we should produce systematic theories (not that, again, I think we should). But even if we choose to give it a wider application, I’m uncomfortable with using it for non-theoretical approaches. “Reflection” makes me think of theoretical reason because, at least metaphorically speaking, both have ocular connotations (theoria, as you know, means “contemplation” or “viewing”). Practical reason unguided by theory is an aural rather than ocular endeavour since it is thoroughly dialogical and dialogue, of course, requires that one listen to one’s interlocutor. But perhaps I’m being, not pedantic now, but anal. Waiter, I think I’ll have that glass of wine after all.

What good is a blog if you can’t be anal once in a while?

There’s a lot of interest in your comment, and I hope you’ll pull out some of the many threads and post them for discussion independently. I’ll confine myself to a defense of the metaphor you express reservations about in the last paragraph.

The interesting thing about “reflection,” considered as a process of thought, is that it is capable of taking itself as an object. This is true generally; it is true of political thinking, moral thinking, etc. And that, to me, is strongly evocative of the visual metaphor. In a looking glass you can see your own reflection — you can see yourself in the act of seeing, in the same way that in (metaphorical) reflection you can think of yourself in the process of thinking. I don’t know of any aural analog for that sort of reflectiveness, and in my view it is of the first importance in both moral and political thinking. That’s in part why I am unhappy about letting go of the very label you’d like to cut loose.

I’m also not sold on the contrast between dialogical and theoretical engagement with others, but that too is a subject for another day.

“Charles, do you hear what you are saying?” While it’s always dismaying to be asked this question, at least it reminds me that “aural” thinking can be as self-reflexive as the “reflective” kind. Anyhow, I grant that this is a definite plus with the term “reflection” and I must say that I never thought of it that way before.

So let me change tack and go after the “equilibrium” in reflective equilibrium. For one thing, the back-and-forth, see-saw movement between practice and theory that it is meant to describe never really struck me as aiming for something that’s properly referred to as an “equilibrium”. For where’s the zero-sum dynamic? The point is to make things cohere, not to balance them against each other. But even accepting that some kind of balancing is involved, I would then complain that what we should be aiming for is the genuine reconciliation of goods, not merely (as with value pluralists) their accommodation. And this requires integrating not balancing, which seems to me to be what practical reason at its best should be all about. Otherwise put, we should think of it as more like “conversation” than “negotiation.” And real conversations never end, hence never reach anything that we might refer to as an equilibrium.

Ah, but you can’t hear yourself hearing, like you can see yourself seeing, or think of yourself thinking, so I stand by my metaphor claim.

I’m interested in the equilibrium claim, not for the social issue of value pluralism, but because my hidden agenda is to think about a kind of balancing involved in eudaimonist thought, where as I see it the ancient theorists were trying to fit together both beliefs of various sorts and other attitudes (conative states of various sorts). It is, as you say, a matter of discovering (or establishing) a certain kind of coherence. I think there can be a kind of reconciliation of goods in a sense, though I don’t think that on the ancient views they really are goods in the sense that e.g. Berlin thinks they are (or that Williams assumes they must think they are). So I agree with you there. I also agree with you about the notion of there being an “equilibrium” to seek, if for no other reason than that that’s a metaphor I’d really like to be able to cash out. The “reflective” part I think (as indicated) we can cash out, but you raise some good points about the sense in which there is any equilibrium to be reached. I wish I had a clear story to tell about that too.

No, no, I’m claiming that “equilibrium” is a bad thing, or least that we can do better, i.e., by aiming for a kind of coherence that does more than simply “strike a balance” between our concerns (whether these are conceived as values, with the pluralists, or as goods, or virtues, or whatever). That is why I favour conversation over negotiation, since only conversation aims for the “reconciliation” of a conflict, which is to say for ending it without compromise, without moral loss. Negotiation, by contrast, can lead to no more than balanced accommodations, which is why the form of practical reason underlying it should be engaged in only after the conversation has failed…

I can see that (at least the aspiration for that) in the social case; I can’t fathom what an analog would be in the individual case, which what I was primarily thinking of.

The idea would be to aim for an ‘integrated’ or ‘cohesive’ self (cf. Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of Self; or R.D. Laing, The Divided Self) as opposed to a ‘balanced’ one.

Fair enough. What is more, I can make sense of a notion by which there need not be losses in value in realization. But I can’t think that there would be any plausible process that would count as “conversation” in any meaningful sense.

Cf. Mikhail Bahktin’s account of the inner, ‘microdialogues’ of the self that often take place within Dostoevsky’s characters in Bahktin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.